Subj : Committing file changes To : George White From : David Noon Date : Sun Aug 20 2000 01:58 am Hi George, Replying to a message of George White to Coridon Henshaw: CH>> It's not intermediate commits I need: what I need is some way to CH>> flush out write operations made to files which might be open for CH>> days or weeks at a time GW> The only reliable way I know of is _NOT_ to keep the files open but to GW> open and close them as needed. It is the _only_ way I know which is GW> guaranteed to update the directory information (Inode under *NIX) so GW> that a chkdsk won't cause you that sort of grief. In a similar GW> situation I ended up opening and closing the file during normal GW> operation to ensure the on-disk information and structures were GW> updated. Originally I opened the file on start-up and kept it open. This is true when one is keeping things simple, such as using sequential file structures. A genuine database [and that is what Coridon claims he is coding] does not restrict itself to simple file structures. The usual approach is to allocate and pre-format a suitably large area of disk, known as a tablespace in DB2, and then maintain database-specific structural data within that. The pre-format operation finishes by closing the physical file, thus ensuring the underlying file system has recorded the number and size of all disk extents allocated to the file. The DBMS is then free to "suballocate" the disk space as and how it sees fit. It also takes on the responsibility to ensure the consistency of the database's content. We will see how Coridon implements such a database system. Regards Dave --- FleetStreet 1.25.1 * Origin: My other computer is an IBM S/390 (2:257/609.5) .